Chatham Area Transit's new executive director, Charles Odimgbe, 50, started work this month after nine years as executive director of the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority in Canton, Ohio.
He will lead the transition toward the system's "public-private partnership" with his employer, Veolia Transportation, after CAT's board in February approved a six-month contract with the international transit company. At the end of that period, Veolia will present the new management model, and the board will consider whether to enter into a long-term contract.
Odimgbe (pronounced oh-DIM-way), a native of Nigeria, and his wife have six children and one stepdaughter.

The new director has the support of Joe Rivers, who has been serving as Chatham's interim executive director, and Charles DeGraff, former board president.
DeGraff credited Odimgbe for boosting the Canton system's ridership levels and making the system more financially sound.
"Charles has been an extremely valuable asset to SARTA, and he will do likewise for Chatham," DeGraff said.

DeGraff played down the fact Odimgbe used a company credit card to buy $14,000 to $15,000 worth of personal items between June 2003 and April 2006.
The expenditures were legal and always paid back, DeGraff said.

"It wasn't much of an issue," he said. "He agreed not to do it anymore, and it was left at that."
Odimgbe said the issue is behind him, and he won't do the same thing in Chatham County.

"The bottom line was that it was allowable within the system," he said. "It's just that somebody didn't see it that way.
"So you live and you learn."

Here are other things Odimgbe said about CAT and its move to a public-private partnership:

Q: What is a public-private partnership?
A: This is basically where the Chatham Area Transit board delegates all authority to a third party to manage the system while they maintain authority in setting policies and fares, but the total operation of the agency falls to the third-party administrator. The CAT board keeps their governing role.

Q: Will current employees remain?
A: To my best understanding, yes. I don't think Veolia is making any proposals for swift change in the staffing level. In terms of numbers, I don't know what the numbers will be at the end of the day. We need to get to July to see what changes will be necessary, but there hasn't been any push at all from anybody to do sweeping staff changes now.


Q: Will the new management form result in more funding?
A: Veolia would be willing to bring some resources into a terminal transit system. However, being a for-profit organization, they will want to see some kind of return for the investments that they make. I think that will determine how much is brought in.

Q: Will transfer fees be removed?
A: The industry standard is free transfers. Sometimes my eyebrows poke up if somebody is doing something that is contrary to the standard. It calls for me to investigate more to see why.
They are proposing a 50 cent increase in fare. So the question is: How much are they going to lose with the free transfer, and how much revenue will come in with the 50 cents? And then we can determine if we are going to lose money or maintain the status quo.
I think that if we maintain the status quo, for the purposes of easier transfers, we should go to free transfers.

Q: How can CAT become more efficient?
A: When you look at the ridership information and then look at the headway - the time between buses - some of it doesn't make sense.
Can we knock off 10 minutes and still be able to provide the same level of service? Even if you threw an extra bus in there and they get to their first destination, is the other bus there for them to transfer? Why bring them there to sit for 15 minutes when they could sit at home for another 10 minutes and then have a seamless transfer?

Q: Your former transit system was funded through a voter-approved sales tax, unlike CAT, which is funded by property taxes. Is there an advantage of one over the other?
A: I am a believer that funding transit through sales tax will get you your best bang and better distribution of liability. The reason is, people look at transit as just moving people. I look at transit as an economic engine.
If transit impacts the economy of the entire county, then there should be an equitable distribution of the liability. As a tourist center, Chatham County will have the opportunity to have people from outside helping fund the transit system, whereby the responsibility is not solely on the backs of the people that live here.

Q: Are there any plans to expand CAT service to areas not being served?
A: It will get to a point where Chatham County reached out enough into the market here and still, if we have capacities left in the system, I think we need to outsource that capacity to the neighboring counties to distribute the liability of funding the system wide enough to where it's not too heavy on one person or the other.